(Mar 19, 2012) Police authorities in several Indonesian provinces have begun subjecting police officers to drug tests, and the capital city, Jakarta, plans to do so in the near future. According to a senior commander in the Jakarta force, the tests will be held for all units in the system and will not be regularly scheduled. "They will be surprise tests," he stated. (Bayu Marhaenjati & FaroukArnaz, Indonesian Police Face Random Drug Testing, THE JAKARTA GLOBE (Mar. 15, 2012); Jakarta Police to Undergo Drug Tests, BERNAMA.COM (Mar. 15, 2012).)

The announcement of the planned testing follows the recent arrests of a number of law enforcement officers on drug use charges. There were 18 such cases in 2011, and officers caught with drugs to date in 2012 include a deputy director of the narcotics unit of the provincial police force in North Sumatra; a subdistrict police chief in the city of Bekasi, in West Java Province, and two officers from Jakarta. According to a spokesperson for the Jakarta police, "[t]he leadership has issued a policy to eradicate narcotics externally and internally. The arrest of police members is proof of our commitment internally." (Marhaenjati & Arnaz, supra.) A spokesperson for the national police elaborated on the situation, stating that "[n]arcotics is a global problem, not only a problem for Indonesia. Every year, those abusing [drugs] get caught and we act on them, but the number of users continue[s] to rise." (Id.)

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